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Christopher Hirsheimer Rick Bayless’s mole de olla Rick Bayless has published nine cookbooks since 1987’s Authentic Mexican. I’ve cooked out of all of them, and I’ve not once come across a bunk recipe. So naturally I’m going to include his latest, More Mexican Everyday (Norton), with the others in our ongoing roundup of local cookbooks. A follow-up to 2005’s Mexican Everyday, it adheres to the same MO, offering simple recipes with (mostly) easy-to-find ingredients....

Rockabilly probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when somebody says “Latin roots music,” but several generations of artists on both sides of the southern U.S. border have taken doo-wop, boogie-woogie, and early rock ’n’ roll to heart. The music—and its associated hot-rod imagery—has long connections to the Mexican American community (particularly on the west coast), with artists blending influences such as 60s girl groups, soul, early punk rock, and a “take no prisoners” style of mariachi vocals....

When New York trombonist Ryan Keberle and his band Catharsis performed at the Hungry Brain in March 2017, it was clear that he had the intolerant policies and posturing of the Trump regime on his mind. Though his group was supporting the 2016 album Azul Infinito (Greenleaf)—a reflection of Keberle’s appreciation of and engagement with the music of South America—they also played several new pieces from their then-forthcoming album of protest songs, June’s Find the Common, Shine a Light (Greenleaf)....

Over the past dozen years, White Suns have created a perfect marriage of folding-table harsh noise and streamlined punk, and the New York trio’s latest full-length, The Lower Way (their first for Decoherence Records), asserts their hybrid style more strongly than ever. By layering assaultive electronics, circuit-bent synths, atonal prepared guitars, fried stomp boxes, musique concrète collages, tortured vocal caterwauling, and minimal scrap-metal plinking, the band make an aching, disorienting, eerie mess of noise....

Ten days or so after Hurricane Maria tore across Puerto Rico last September, Casa Pueblo—a solar-powered, self-sufficient environmental center in the mountainous municipality of Ajuntas—got in touch with the San Juan theater company Y No Había Luz. With the electrical grid destroyed, the entire island was in survival mode, focused on clearing debris and securing food and clean water. Casa Pueblo, one of the few sites anywhere with electricity, had become a hub of activity....

During my infancy at the Reader some seven years ago, I got to know Jessica Hopper through her writing. Although she was a regular freelancer for the paper, she was rarely if at all seen in the office. Instead, Hopper was part of a nomadic bunch of music-journo idealists who took obvious pleasure both in the freedom of the freelance life and in the writing itself. There’s also some serious journalism....

In honor of this week’s plants issue, I’m going to write about . . . TIFs! So, if you think of TIF property tax dollars as the nutrients that fertilize development—especially in low-income communities—then the way Mayor Rahm distributes this money helps explain why some areas are overgrowing with condos and commerce while others are made to feel lucky to get so much as a grocery store. On March 7, as the council’s zoning committee—speaking of rubber stamps—voted 9 to 4 to OK Lincoln Yards, Rahm issued a press release declaring, “While the City Council was deliberating Lincoln Yards today, thousands of south side residents and shoppers turned out to open the first grocery store to operate in Woodlawn in more than 40 years....

Parachute and Prop Thtr Chicagoans like their off-Loop theater a little scruffy—not their fine dining. That’s the beauty of Avondale-based Prop Thtr’s new neighbor, Parachute, a top-flight Korean-American joint run by the husband-and-wife duo of Johnny Clark and Top Chef alum Beverly Kim. A show at Prop preceded by a bite at this Beard nominee for best new restaurant can make for an unforgettable evening: on my last foray an exquisitely sizzling bibimbap with duck egg and kale was followed by large helpings of fake blood courtesy of Bare Knuckle Productions’ thrilling History of Violence....

Some people send flowers for Mother’s Day. But for onetime Chicago theatermaker Carlo Lorenzo García, his bouquet for his mom, María Guadalupe, takes the form of art. Based in Austin since 2016, García spent part of his time in COVID lockdown finally delving into the story of his mom’s harrowing childhood in Laredo, Texas, and her subsequent escape to Chicago. The result, a new digital solo show, A Portrait of My Mother, opens on Mother’s Day through Austin’s Jarrott Productions....

In 2019, LGBTQ television has never been better. According to GLAAD, one in 11 or 8.8 percent of characters on scripted prime-time shows identify as LGBTQ, which amounts to more than 100 more than there were last year. This means more representation, inclusivity, and accuracy and television content that will continue to break down barriers and highlight a variety of identities across all spectrums. Here are ten of the most influential shows airing right now....

Halloween isn’t until Tuesday, but this weekend offers plenty of opportunities to scare yourself. Here’s some of what we recommend: Sat 10/28: Halloween cuisine isn’t all eyeballs and brains. Fat Rice (2957 W. Diversey) chef Abraham Conlon has whipped up a prix fixe feast of frog’s legs, gator gumbo, a boudin cake, and myriad other ways to eat odd animals for sustenance at the Big Sl-Easy: All Hallow’s Eve Jazz Funeral....

The sand I know best rings Lake Michigan and gives me a place to put my beach chair on a summer afternoon. The sand in Teatro Línea de Sombra’s Amarillo is life, death, and oblivion. Filling the stage over the course of the Mexican troupe’s powerful 70-minute piece, it signifies the Chihuahuan Desert, the border territory through which thousands of undocumented immigrants trek each year hoping to reach the United States....

Kevin Hart (left) in The Wedding Ringer This past fall, when Jonathan Rosenbaum introduced the James Cagney comedy Blonde Crazy (1931) at the Siskel Center, he argued that that Cagney’s screen persona in the ’30s was never plausible but always relatable. One can’t readily imagine Cagney’s character in Crazy existing in the real world. He’s a walking contradiction—a wisecracking con man with a mean streak who’s as kind to his friends as he is ruthless with the rich folks he swindles....

When Joe Ricketts suddenly shut down the DNAinfo and Gothamist network of local news sites on November 2, two reporters I know lost their jobs. Ted Cox, who covered City Hall for DNAinfo, had contributed sports essays to the Reader for years; his gifts were no secret to me or longtime readers. But Alisa Hauser didn’t work in editorial for this paper; she was a display ad sales representative. When she joined DNAinfo at its inception, covering Bucktown and Wicker Park, her talent and energy as a reporter were a revelation....

If all had gone well, we’d be heading into the last days of Karen Lewis’s first term as mayor and, fingers crossed, the start of her second. I’ve got a bad case of the might-have-beens as I watch Rahm continue to throw cash at the well-to-do (think Lincoln Yards) while trying to eradicate his reputation as Mayor 1 Percent who, you know, throws cash at the well-to-do. The final vote on Lincoln Yards will come in the lame duck session in April....

Before I first press play on an “aging punks still at it” record, I try to prepare myself for the worst. Whether the band in question have retained only one original member in a completely retooled lineup (like present-day Gang of Four), or replaced their figurehead (like the Misfits did in the 90s), or awkwardly embraced current musical trends (remember Iggy Pop’s 2003 collaboration with Sum 41?), or pivoted to whatever the fuck “Black Flag” were doing on 2013’s aptly titled What The ....

More than 30 years into this gig, I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve seen Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice adapted for the stage. The Regency-era author’s enduring popularity isn’t a mystery: Austen’s novels championed women in an era when women’s options for generating income faced draconian limitations. Unless they were titled, women of Great Britain’s early 1800s couldn’t even inherit property legally. Austen’s work makes the potentially devastating consequences of codified misogyny crystal clear: the line between being unmarried or without means and the hellscape of the workhouse was, as it remains now in so many places, brutally porous....

Julia Thiel Creme de cacao isn’t just dated—it’s all but defunct as a serious cocktail ingredient. Usually found on the bottom shelf, stuck between other sickly sweet liqueurs, it ranks right up there with Sour Apple Pucker and Boone’s Farm in the hierarchy of respectable booze. I’m pretty sure I had it in college, where it featured in classics like the Peppermint Patty (creme de cacao with peppermint schnapps or creme de menthe)....

In early 2011 the Reader launched a redesigned print edition that flipped the music section upside down—the B Side, as it was called, began with an inverted back cover and even had its own table of contents. Our Gig Poster of the Week feature began on that table of contents, as a way to showcase a different segment of the Chicago music community. It’s been online only for years, and I took it over when I started at the Reader in February 2019—though I’m pretty sure that all the silliest headlines have been the work of music editor Philip Montoro....

The Reader‘s archive is vast and varied, going back to 1971. Every day in Archive Dive, we’ll dig through and bring up some finds. Earlier this month, the Chicago Cultural Center launched an exhibition of 36 panels of a 480-foot mural painted in Grant Park in May, 1989, by Keith Haring and 500 Chicago Public Schools students. The panels had previously hung in Midway Airport, in the walkway between the terminal and the parking garage....